I love telenovelas.
At least, I think I do. I have never watched a single episode of Mexico's serial television episodes of lust, passion, lust, relationships, lust, class distinctions, and well -- lust. But saying I love telenovelas sounds a little bit classier (and more Mexican) than confessing to having been duped into watching soap opera after soap opera.
What other explanation is there for my choices of Roma, La Casa de Papel, and Downton Abbey? There was nothing in any of those story arcs to keep my attention. It was all about relationships. Only about relationships -- and the worst aspects of celebrity infatuation.
So, I did not surprise myself last night when I sat down to watch the first episode of the third season of The Crown. For those of you who may have escaped its Jupiter-gravity pull, The Crown is a ten-year Netflix project to capture the life of Queen Elizabeth II (Queen Elizabeth I to the Scots amongst us) in the amber of television digits.
The first two seasons have been filmed and aired. The third season premiered yesterday.
The series is the most expensive television production in history. And the lavish sets and costumes leave no doubt the money has been well-spent (other than the occasional obvious clunker where the American White House looks as if it was filmed using Tara as a stand-in).*
But the story is pure soap opera. Lust. Passion. Lust. Relationships. Lust. Class distinctions. Lust. I suspect we viewers think because the characters are not stuck with Mr. and Mrs. in front of their names, but instead are HRM, HRH, and his grace, that we will not notice that the dialog is little more than tittle-tattle lifted from the headlines of The Sun and The Mail. Still, we watch. I watch.
I told you I was going to view only the first episode of the third season. I did. But not "only." I ended up watching seven of the ten episodes. There is something about telenovelas that is binge-worthy.
And that is not the only thing I binged on. A night at the movies deserves a good dinner.
By coincidence, I had discovered that my favorite grocer, Alex at Super Hawaii in San Patricio, had stocked some new Italian products. Alex is a smart guy. When the United States started tacking random tariffs on goods, he decided to cover his marketing bets by looking for other sources of goods for his customers. Britain and Germany were his initial sources.
His Italian shelf on Sunday included various sizes of well-crafted pasta. I bought several varieties.
I then saw something I have not seen in years. Jars of datterino giallo and pomodorino giallo -- the yellow plum and cherry tomatoes that give several Italian dishes their distinctive taste. Mexico may have first cultivated tomatoes and introduced them to the rest of the world, but Italians turned the fruit into a culinary marvel.
The sight of the jars triggered one of those memories that lie dormant in my mental food closet tucked under two unused winter coats. On 10 August 1973, I left Athens to drive to my new assignment at RAF Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire. I remember the day because the president had resigned the day before.
I took the ferry from Patras across the Ionian Sea to Brindisi and then spent about a week exploring Italy. Just north of Rome, I stopped in Fiano Romano for lunch. I do not recall the name of the restaurant. It was nothing fancy. And it certainly was not a tourist attraction.
What I do recall is my first taste of spaghetti all'ama amatriciana. It was a simple dish. Yellow tomatoes. Bacon. Pickled pepper. A small sprinkle of grated pecorino romano. Simple, but memorably delicious.
I have attempted to replicate the experience, like some opium addict forever chasing The Dragon. I have never been able to re-live that same experience -- because it is an impossible quest. The memory is in my closet, and it does not want company.
But, I have learned from those experiments. If you have a high-quality pasta, the sauce is simply an adjunct that will bring out the flavors of the pasta. It should be simple, and it can be made of any ingredients that will suit your palate.
Last night, the foundation was an easy choice. I used the jugged Italian tomatoes I had just purchased at Hawaii along with some fresh cherry tomatoes to freshen up the taste. Shallots. Onion, Garlic. Ginger. A serrano. Kalamata olives. Italian green olives. Bacon. And some feta. All of that seasoned with basil, oregano, and thyme -- with a dash of balsamic to finish it off. I then folded the sauce into some fettuccine.
It worked.
I almost added lemon zest. I am glad I did not. It would have taken the taste in an entirely different direction. But, if I try something similar in the future, I will probably add a bit of fish sauce to the balsamic. Without it, the balsamic was just a bit too sweet; it probably augmented the natural sweetness of the tomatoes and onion.
Lord Mountbatten once described the food served at Buckingham palace as having "less flavor than nursery food." I hope that Betty and Phil were not offended with my choice of dinner.
* -- The White House substitute is actually an English manor house in Essex -- Hylands Park -- that makes the White House look like the provincial lodgings of a renegade nation. But the series seems to bear a 250-year grudge about American independence -- including two episodes designed to knock down Jack Kennedy's legacy a dozen pegs or so.
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